The present invention relates generally to methods and systems for transmitting messages via computer networks, and more particularly to a method and system for controlling the transmission of an electronic message sent by a computer over a computer network.
Computer messaging, termed E-mail, is well known, and has become a ubiquitous tool for business in the 1990's. With the advent of the Internet, E-mail has become a tool for use by advertisers and others, as well, who often blanket users with undesired "junk" E-mail similar to junk mail. In fact, the technology exists for advertisers to completely overwhelm the Internet and users with electronic mail should several advertisers desire to attempt to reach all users of the Internet at once with either large graphics intensive files or multimedia files.
The present invention is therefore directed to the problem of developing a method and a system for controlling the transmission of electronic mail so that users do not get bombarded with electronic mail they do not desire, thereby limiting the ability of E-mail senders to broadcast messages to all users over the Internet.